


galatea

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Series: Sportsfest 2018 [35]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person, Selfcest, Sportsfest 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 03:39:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15572928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: At night, you kneel at your desk and sharpen all your pencils one by one. The boy in your sketchbook is awash in moonlight and smiling up at you like he knows a secret. You think you know it too.Most likely to point out weaknesses: Oikawa Tooru





	galatea

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sportsfest 2018 Bonus Round 3: Superlatives | [originally posted here](https://sportsfest.dreamwidth.org/10320.html?thread=1878608#cmt1878608)

You like to think you are a connoisseur of beautiful things. You say as much to your best friend over lunch, in those words, poking at a bento so pretty you can’t bear to eat it. _I am a connoisseur of beautiful things._ You laugh when he rolls his eyes and cuffs you lightly on the back of your head. When you go back to class and pick up your pencil again, you sketch a face from memory. It’s the face you know best.

Paper is just another kind of mirror. Sometimes, you think it is more honest, for what is a drawing if not what the mind and the heart see; what is a drawing if not the truth? Eyes can lie, a fact you’re fond of trumpeting when you take off your glasses and all the signs on the road blur into bright lights. Today, you are wearing them and everything is clear and sharp. You’re under a sycamore tree in the schoolyard, finishing your picture. You trace a familiar cheekbone the way you like, erase a scar on the back of a hand. Knees, unbandaged. Knuckles so smooth you’re dying to run your thumb over them and play them like an instrument of bone.

At night, you kneel at your desk and sharpen all your pencils one by one. The boy in your sketchbook is awash in moonlight and smiling up at you like he knows a secret. You think you know it too.

Your own reflection looks most haggard in the morning. You’ve never liked spending a long time in the bathroom, for you hate your dark circles and crow’s feet. A kiss on a pane of glass is just a breath that fogs up your vision. A kiss on paper leaves no trace. _So pretty you can’t bear to eat it._ So you don’t, you cut an orange and eat it slice by slice instead and let the juice run sticky down your fingers, lick them clean one by one and spit the seeds out into your palm. How clumsy, how imperfect.

It is too late when you realise what you’ve done. It is too late when you realise there are no stars in your eyes, that roses will never bloom between your lips, that you cannot erase a bruise so easily from your skin.

In the stark glare of a street light beside the bus stop, you drink an entire can of Pocari Sweat and crush the paper in your hand. You crush the can in your other hand and smooth the paper out again. These hands of yours are so careless, so careless, but they have made something that will eternally be beautiful.


End file.
